It doesn’t take a sociologist to decipher what Spears and her shameless producers are up to. “Worms at Tacos El Gordo” the headline announces. “Roaches at Thai Street Cafe!” “Rat Droppings at Honey Pig!” “Raw Meat Issues at Korean Garden!” A quick look at the KNTV Home Page demonstrates that this “investigative reporter” makes a living from reading Southern Nevada Health District reports and then trolling Asian and Mexican restaurants in hopes of ambushing and embarrassing them.

More often than not that person is an Asian- or Mexican-American who looks like a deer caught in the headlights when Spears shows up at their front door.

“You know you have to be clean even when you’re really busy?” she asks with all the hard hitting chops of a weather girl wannabe.

Because of course, she proclaims with grave inflection, “…the onions themselves were not being washed.”

“That’s the head of a chicken…” she exclaims as if she didn’t know they ever had one. Then comes, “Tyler says they use them to cook broth,” her voice fading in quiet disbelief. Finally, dripping with false sincerity and classic intonations of self-seriousness, there’s: “…cut lettuce that was kept at room temperature.” Quelle horreur!

She then proceeds to walk through the place, with the haughtiness of a third grade teacher, pointing out various things that she thinks need to be cleaned up.

It’s all pretty craven and embarrassing (for the restaurant, for the viewer and for her – even if she’s clueless), but where she and her station really show their innate bigotry is a few minutes later in the same report.

The last minute of the February 15th segment is devoted to a raw sewage spill in Applebee’s. Seems like a toilet backed up and Applebee’s employees were walking through human waste in the restaurant. What is notable about this “reporting” is what it does not contain. There’s no ambush, no interview, no attempt to contact Mr. Applebee to inquire about the company policy for having cooks and waitresses walking through human shit. No attempt to ask customers what they think. No manager in the headlights. Just a few shots of a soap-sudded floor and the statement that it was eventually cleaned up.

And we’re talking human feces here folks, not a small splatter of chicken blood on the side of a refrigerator.*

Aside from the casual mention that Appelbee’s got, the answer is bupkus. I could find no mention on the KNTV website of places like the California Hotel, Klondike Casino, or Emerald Island (all of whom, this year, received over 30 demerits from SNHD in its inspections). Even if Spears did call attention to these places, it’s dollars to doughnuts she didn’t show up on the hotel floor with her camera and a list of questions for the CEO.

“Not a sanitary condition to be defrosting meat,” she says like she knows anything about the subject. A few flies in the place (because the front door was open), also gives her much cause for faking some concern.

“Hopefully that knife tip didn’t come off in anyone’s food,” is said with a nervous giggle as she looks upon a stunted blade — just to give you something else to worry about.

Television “news” doesn’t get anymore craven than that. Not content with the information (and “gotcha” interview) she has at her disposal, she has to gin up another cause for alarm (all while pretending to be on the side of her subject), so you’ll keep paying attention.***

That’s where Dirty Dining really goes off the rails. Each segment elevates a bucket on the floor, or produce kept at an improper temperature, to the same sky-is-falling tragedy as rats in the rice bowl. Shaming the little guy is her mission statement, not educating the public.

There’s a public service to be offered here, but it’s too easy to pick the low hanging fruit and choose to intimidate our hard-working immigrant population and call it a day. The entire segment ought to be renamed “Fear and Loathing of Foreign Food.”

** No grades are ever “final,” the SNHD tells me; they always quickly reevaluate a place if they have a significant number of demerits. The grade you see see on the SNHD website is the one given after a follow-up inspection.

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8 Responses to The Dirt on Dirty Dining

Wow, I cringe every time her segment is on and think to my self “Wow, Hard hitting investigative reporting or trolling the health inspectors web site?” Always feels lazy, smug and a little racist to me. And I’m a middle aged white guy who thinks snowflakes are hilarious and does not own a Korean Bar B Que so this isn’t an SJW action response.

Kind of an old story but it seems 7 years ago, bias was nothing new. Darcy claims on Twitter that you didn’t contact her for comment but in the attached article, she never responded according to the RJ.

ELV responds: We afforded Darcy Spears the same courtesy she shows Chinatown restaurants when she arrives unannounced at their front door, with a camera man, and tries to embarrass them in front of thousands of people.

I work with actual investigative reporters who break scandals like collusion in the sheriff’s department and child abuse by priests. This woman is a no-account hack who ought to have taken the $20 journalism class instead of the $10 journalism class.

See also: Brad A. Johnson, who does the same crap in Orange County, except his lists are at least complete and don’t leave off white-owned or white-managed restaurants.

Oh, and let’s not forget the $20 law class instead of $10 law class—as long as it’s not based on protected class or extremely arbitrary reasons, restaurants can refuse service or entry for cause. They’re well within their rights to deny entry to someone who is coming with the express intent to stir up trouble.

I agree with your basic points of the article, This sort of reporting is reprehensible, and I completely agree with those calling it racist. At the same time, I feel someone should point out that there aren’t good excuses for a restaurant getting a B (or lower) health rating. Of course that doesn’t justify this sort of reporting. However, I think a fair viewpoint isn’t that it’s wrong for a reporter to be shoving a microphone in the face of a small business owner who happens to be a darker skinned immigrant, but the problem is that she *isn’t* also grilling the light skinned business operators or those places owned by some of this town’s larger employers.

Let me also take this time to thank the restaurant health inspectors in this country. I have no doubt that there are huge problems with some agencies and agents, and they no doubt receive warranted criticism, but imagine what the kitchens in this (or any other) town would be like if these agencies didn’t exist. I don’t want to make the perfect the enemy of the good. I believe these regulations generally make my dining experiences safer, and I thank them for the job they do.

I miss the RJ publishing SNHD restaurant inspections. I read them and took notice of where I didn’t want to eat. It seemed pretty unbiased to me and I know one of the inspectors who gave me some good advice on what she saw. Little things like octopus being “tenderized” in a washing machine (a strip hotel no-less and one of ELV’s favorites) a chemically treated 2×4 stirring re-fried beans, women preparing food on the floor and feigning innocence. I certainly would advise talking to someone in charge at channel 13 before jumping on the racist bandwagon so popular now with the radical leftists.